PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - Oct 25

Oct 25 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

* Twitter disclosed that it planned to price its eagerly awaited initial public offering in the $17 a share to $20 a share range, as it readies a road show for investors. ()

* The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday recommended tighter controls on how doctors prescribe the most commonly used narcotic painkillers. The move, which represents a major policy shift, follows a decade-long debate over whether the widely abused drugs, which contain the narcotic hydrocodone, should be controlled as tightly as more powerful painkillers like OxyContin. ()

* Fury over reports that American intelligence had monitored the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel spread from Germany to much of Europe on Thursday, plunging trans-Atlantic relations to a low and threatening to recast the United States and President Obama from friend and ally to cyberbully. ()

* When the stock market opened on Thursday, NQ Mobile Inc , a Chinese mobile security company, had a valuation of $1.1 billion. Just hours later, half of its value was erased. Muddy Waters, a short-selling firm known for its scathing reports on Chinese companies, released a harsh assessment of NQ Mobile on Thursday, calling it a “massive fraud.” ()

* Federal officials did not fully test the online health insurance marketplace until two weeks before it opened to the public on Oct. 1, contractors told Congress on Thursday. ()

* The Federal Reserve’s rule asks banks to estimate how much cash might flee in a 30-day period, and requires them to enough assets that they could sell to cover that outflow. ()

* Microsoft Corp’s earnings of $5.24 billion beat expectations, and were helped in large part by a surge in the company’s corporate software business. ()

* On Thursday, DuPont said it would spin off its performance chemicals segment into a new publicly traded company. The unit - which makes a pigment that turns paints, paper and plastics white, as well as refrigerants and polymers for cables - generated about $7 billion in revenue in 2012. ()

* More than a year after the activist investor William Ackman won a bitter battle for control of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he is cashing in part of his investment at a substantial profit. ()

* Many high-end brands have left behind Bal Harbour Shops, for years a magnet to the wealthy, for more breathing room in Miami’s Design District - once an enclave of furniture showrooms, low storefronts and empty streets in the shadow of two interstate highways. ()